Matrix Games Forums

Greetings
I have some questions about Ground Combat, Ground Units and similar stuff.

1)I know that you cant project your Ground Units but how many diffrent units will be in game?
I read about Regular and Militia(propably garnisson type based on population) but there is chance for more class? Like Heavy units, Mech Units, Infrantry etc?
BTW If it will be hard to add projectable(and upgradable) ground units? Something like:
Race(if you ave many in your empire and they are loyal to you)
Armor - based on tech
Shields - based on tech
Weapon - based on tech
Special training(if any) or eqiupment- based on tech/race/goverment
2) Actually I know that Agressivnes and Inteligence have effect how strong troops are. Any other characteristic can give additional bonus/penalty?
3) Is technology have any effect how strong ground troops are? And if have then how much?
4)I see on video that Destroyer transpoort one units of ground troops.Is any military ship can transport and drop Infrantry on enemy worlds or this is possible only for troop carriers?

This Troops on battleship have some aditional effect? Like possibility do board enemy vessels or space staton or defending from enemy intrusions?
Or meyby this is ship crew? And ships dont gain exp but crew do. That will be inrteresting.
5)I get info that Ground Troops gain experience from fights. Are veteran units much more valuable than green units? And how? If they firopower is higher or meyby they have better chance of survival battle?
6)Is it possible to give names to your ground Units and how hard is to keep experienced units from daying in battles?
7) How big role random factor have in ground battles? If have any.
8) If it possible to evacuate troops from planet if you think that you cant win?
9) If it possible to evacuate or force ressetle cvilian population?
10)It is possible to use scorched earth tactics?

I have some more questions but forgot some. Silly me.
BTW If anone can throw screenshot with Ground Unit stats, ground battle or something similar that will be nice.

ORIGINAL: Sarissofoi
1)I know that you cant project your Ground Units but how many diffrent units will be in game?
I read about Regular and Militia(propably garnisson type based on population) but there is chance for more class? Like Heavy units, Mech Units, Infrantry etc?
BTW If it will be hard to add projectable(and upgradable) ground units? Something like:
Race(if you ave many in your empire and they are loyal to you)
Armor - based on tech
Shields - based on tech
Weapon - based on tech
Special training(if any) or eqiupment- based on tech/race/goverment

Each race has their own troop unit - it's some of their citizens recruited as soldiers. So the troop unit shares the characteristics of its race. When a colony is attacked its population will also rise up as a militia to defend the colony. Each 1 billion citizens of population is roughly equal to one troop.

2) Actually I know that Agressivnes and Inteligence have effect how strong troops are. Any other characteristic can give additional bonus/penalty?

Some rare planets have special ruins that provide defensive bonuses for troops.

3) Is technology have any effect how strong ground troops are? And if have then how much?

Not directly. But medical center components on a troop transport or at a space port can recover injured troops readiness faster.

4)I see on video that Destroyer transpoort one units of ground troops.Is any military ship can transport and drop Infrantry on enemy worlds or this is possible only for troop carriers?

Troop transport components can be built into any military ship. Typically dedicated Troop Transport ships carry 4-7 troop units. Large military ships like Capital Ships, Cruisers and Destroyers also usually carry some troops. But you can design your ships however you like for this.

This Troops on battleship have some aditional effect? Like possibility do board enemy vessels or space staton or defending from enemy intrusions?
Or meyby this is ship crew? And ships dont gain exp but crew do. That will be inrteresting.

Troops are not the crew of a ship. Their purpose is to attack or defend colonies.

5)I get info that Ground Troops gain experience from fights. Are veteran units much more valuable than green units? And how? If they firopower is higher or meyby they have better chance of survival battle?

Veteran units battle strength is higher, so they have greater success in battle, and last longer in combat.

6)Is it possible to give names to your ground Units and how hard is to keep experienced units from daying in battles?

Yes, you can name each troop unit if you wish.

7) How big role random factor have in ground battles? If have any.

There is some random factor in the outcome of battles, but the primary determining factors are the strength of the opposing forces, the timing/spacing of the invasion forces, and the size of the defending militia (population).

8) If it possible to evacuate troops from planet if you dont think so that you can win?

You get warnings about incoming fleets if your sensors can see them. So I guess you could decide to abandon a targetted colony and load the troops onto transports. But often attacks can come very quickly, so you may not have time for evacuation.

9) If it possible to evacuate or force ressetle cvilian population?

No

10)It is possible to use scorched earth tactics?

You cannot target a civilian population at a colony. However any ground combat at a colony will always cause some of the population to die in the fighting.

I'm a bit surprised/disappointed that tech doesn't affect troops ... you mean a band of militia with pistols is equivalent to fusion-rifle equipped troops in shielded PBA ? [:D]
And why can't we evacuate pop - with transport ships like in mostly every 4X ?

Yeah this is sad news.
I expected at last something like autoupgrade from MoO I and II. This propably mean that are resarch are concetrated on new ship/starbase components. Only.
Correct me if I am wrong. And I hope I am.

At last good news that Troopers gain experience and have more than one hp.
About only aggresivnese and inteligence affect strneght of Ground Combat Units. Int and Agr also affect other things then I think that there should be also something like Thoughness whose affect only ground troops. Race can be low inteligent and not agressive but can have though and strong in phisical sense. On the other hand highly inteligent and agressive race of space rabbits with fragile and weak body shouldnt have troops on this same level as higly inteligence and agressive race of space wolfes whose are though fast and have hunters instinct.

I suppose the real time gameplay with no stopping for turn base style battles really makes it hard to have a sophisticated ground invasion model when space battles can be going on at the same time,hence no need for tech research as you just have a generic troop unit for every race.

Blasphemy!
You forgot about actve pausa!
You should suffer, suffer greatly:)!

Look at ground batles in MoO 2. They are in real time(battles alvays end in one turn but still). And troops are affected by technology.

ORIGINAL: Sarissofoi

Blasphemy!
You forgot about actve pausa!
You should suffer, suffer greatly:)!

Look at ground batles in MoO 2. They are in real time(battles alvays end in one turn but still). And troops are affected by technology.

The gound battles in MOO2 were shit.You either have a ground invasion model that has real depth or make it simple.

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

The gound battles in MOO2 were shit.You either have a ground invasion model that has real depth or make it simple.

MOO2s ground battles were pretty simple, weren't they? It was pretty much dice rolls with some modifiers for tech.

It just gave you a pretty (for the time) animation of the battle to watch instead of popping up suddenly with Planet Captured or what have you.

I quite liked the ground invasions in MOO2. They were fun to watch.

My biggest issue with what I have heard about ground battles is the time it takes to invade a planet.The developer said it takes less than a year.I find it very immersive breaking to think one could invade a core planet with billions of people and similar tech in less than a year.I think core planets should take at least 5 years of battle,with ample opportunity to reinforce and break an invasion.

Exactly my thoughts.
Ground battles should take time.

And about MoO II. Ground battles was simple. Roll a dice. But still technology affect this by three modifiers(weopon, armor, shield) plus race modifiers(heavy G race, low g race, subterran defender, race bonus) and there was three type of units:
Heavies(Tanks or Robots)
Infratry(normal or with exoskeleton)
Militia
And that was fun to watch. I loved when my Marines break enemy tanks and infrantry. Or when my BattleMechs slaughter enemy invasion force.

I think it's important not to get hung up on this Ashbery, one could also comment on how unrealistic the time span is to establish colonies immediately using a colony ship, but I'm sure the devs have reasons for setting up time limits for such things.

I've never seen a game like this on such a big scale, maybe having longer ground battles has detrimental consequences on gameplay at this size and scale. Maybe not "realistic" a such but afterall...it's a game.

If we were going to discuss realism or more immersive gameplay, then I would absolutely love to see 'realistic' planet and star sizes first and foremost!

I suppose it could depend on what type of weapons the invaders are using as to how long it took to take over a planet.

I think ground battles are an area we may expand on post-release or in an expansion. Right now though, they do work well in my experience but there's definitely room to add detail.

Realistically, I suspect any invading troops in a scenario like that would be mostly mopping up the defending forces and policing the major population centres.

Space superiority would force the defenders to scatter and relegate them to mostly hit-and-run attacks or they'd just get bombed into dust from orbit.

Given that, I think a year is about right to bring a planet under control to the point you can do something with it (ie, you're in control of most of the industry and infrastructure).

My question would be will we see low morale on a newly-captured planet? As in, will the local population continue to resist the occupying force for a while?

EDIT: Er, whoops. Guess I forgot to press refresh on this thread before I typed my reply. Most of what I said has already been said.

I don't care much for "realism" of invasions and don't want any details in them - we're in epic galactic 4x, not a Guad or D Day game !
I liked the way Moo 1 and 2 did them, you had to take into account the "big" factors (quantity & quality). Here it seems the battles will be played with numbers and fist power only, a shame for a SciFi game !

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

My biggest issue with what I have heard about ground battles is the time it takes to invade a planet.The developer said it takes less than a year.I find it very immersive breaking to think one could invade a core planet with billions of people and similar tech in less than a year.I think core planets should take at least 5 years of battle,with ample opportunity to reinforce and break an invasion.

I disagree -- not necessarily from a realism standpoint (although I disagree in that regard as well), but definitely from a gameplay standpoint.

Simply put, five years is just too damn long. (Frankly, I think even a year might be too long, but I'm willing to reserve judgment until I've played the game.) That would be far too lengthy a time to take over -- and most importantly, start getting use out of -- a colony.

Implementing planetary conquest on that kind of timeline would almost certainly make it much harder to gain any kind of momentum during a war; you'd likely see a lot more stalemates, which would be incredibly boring. Not that I want wars to be over instantly and take only a few months, but you do want to be able to see at least some progress within a reasonable amount of time. (Heck, even if you're on the losing side, at least you still know how the war is going.)

I believe that one year is a good average time for ground troops to conquer, stabilize, and begin to progress an enemy planet. If a turn-based game has empires conquer and use a conquered planet in one turn then one turn in that game can equal one year. This makes sense if you consider much science-fiction stories from novels where galactic wars last for decades or centuries; in some stories, even for millenniums...or far longer lasting wars. Though in the extremey long lasting wars beyond millenniums it is a series of on and off total war and cold wars with no stable official peace.

Sometimes turn-based games have actual standard dates and turns might equal a month or even a day. In these cases sometimes a planet is still conquered and used in one turn. That seems more odd to me.

Real-time space, strategy games might have different set periods of conquering and being able to use a planet. I'm less familiar with those types. I'm not sure what the mechanic is for Distant Worlds.

Games like these are based on abstractions anyway.

I guess it is all about air/space superiority and so much about the ground combat. Once you destroyed most of the defenses from the skies, you can easily wipe out the planet's population or set them to work for you.

ORIGINAL: Gertjan

I guess it is all about air/space superiority and so much about the ground combat. Once you destroyed most of the defenses from the skies, you can easily wipe out the planet's population or set them to work for you.

The game does not model planet bombardment.I hope the expansion pack includes bombarding population and the chance to drop alien flu as I think that would be the only realistic way to conquer a planet of billions with similar techonology,let alone occupy it.

Look at Afghanistan.It only has 28,150,000 fellow monkeys with poor tech and look at the cost in lives and money.Now think of trying to occupy and conquer a jungle planet of 6 billion Arachnids.Not going to happen.

You think ashbhery about modern total warfare.
Model in game looks rather like XVIII-XIX warfare model. Where armies fight armies and by most times citizen dont fight wars. You can call this limited wars by opozition to total war model.
In this model nuking planet makes no sense. You fight for lands and peoples. Enemy citiziens are your future subject, you dont want to kill them. This game have spaceopreas settings not hard sf.
More I think about it more I like it.
Although still I dont wanna have Sulkens in my empire unless I can send them on some sort of a prison planet or sell them back to Sulken empire or anyone who want these bugs.